Saturday 23 – Sunday 24 September 2017

CAConrad will create a (Soma)tic Poetry Ritual at KW Institute for Contemporary Art based on the work of Ian Wilson. For the two-day workshop he will use handmade maps and a reconfigured version of Jason Dodge’s sculpture A golden lightning rod pointing north to study the many aspects of our planet’s directional points of East and West. He will use these references to explore life and death, as the known and the unknown forces of our world and how these directional archetypes help and hinder our lives. This is a love letter to the Future Wilderness of our world.

In March of 2017 CAConrad conducted the North and South workshop at KW, exploring the power structures of manmade maps in relation to societal treatment of the northern and southern hemispheres of our bodies.

CAConrad is the author of nine books of poetry and essays; the latest While Standing in Line for Death (Wave Books, 2017), which includes the poems from Width of a Witch, and Mount Monadnock Transmissions (Sharking of the Birdcage) both published by Jason Dodge’s poetry press 500places. He has received fellowships from The Pew Foundation, Lannan Foundation, MadDowell Colony, Headlands Center fro the Arts, and Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.

Mapping Dimension 27 is part of the program The Weekends, funded by the Capital Cultural Fund, Berlin.

About

Bulegoa z/b in Bilbao, Contemporary Art Centre Vilnius, If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution in Amsterdam, KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, Playground Festival (STUK arts centre and M Museum) in Leuven, and Tate Modern in London collaborate in Corpus, an international network for commissioning performance-related work.

Bulegoa z/b in Bilbao, Contemporary Art Centre Vilnius, If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution in Amsterdam, KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, Playground Festival (STUK arts centre and M Museum) in Leuven, and Tate Modern in London collaborate in Corpus, an international network for commissioning performance-related work.

These institutions, diverse in scale, character and history, share a longstanding interest in, and engagement with performance. Sharing experiences, ideas, and (re)sources, Corpus aims to invest in the practice of performance and embraces its many connotations and varied intellectual kinships. Associated partners to Corpus are: CAPC musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux, Casa do Povo in São Paulo, La Ferme du Buisson in Noisiel, The Kitchen in New York, Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen in Düsseldorf, Gallery at REDCAT in Los Angeles, Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw.

Corpus was founded in 2012 by the Centre d’Art Contemporain in Brétigny, If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution, Playground Festival (STUK arts centre and M Museum) and Tate Modern.

Corpus operates within a two-year rhythm, in which around twelve new works are commissioned. Its structure assists artists in developing work over time and will allow works to evolve in repertory. Corpus wants to create conditions for artists to experiment, speculate, or revisit ideas. Process and presentation are considered to be on equal footing, and the evolution of the series of works is considered as a part of the whole project. The collaboration between the partners thus creates new leverage in terms of both the specific and heterogeneous needs of performance.

The name of the network is chosen for its meaning of ‘collection’, and refers to both a ‘body of institutions’ and a ‘body of works’. The name Corpus also stresses the body as an emblem of performance. In the current flux of developments in performance—the revival of its legacies, the proliferation of an extended notion of this discipline, and an added connotation of ‘achievement’ in a socio-economical sense—the importance of the fundamental component in this discourse, the body, the corpus, will be reiterated. At risk of appearing essentialist, Corpus wants to re-open discussions of ‘the body’, in relation to notions of the ‘live’—and ‘death’—in performance.

In Corpus’ first phase, projects have been realized with Orla Barry, Tim Etchells (i.c.w. FormContent), Joëlle Tuerlinckx, and Emily Roysdon, as well as research projects on Laboratoire Agit-Art and Isidoro Valcárcel Medina.